Great Britain and the Palestinian people have had what can best be described as a troubled relationship, even before the recent news came out that former British prime minister Tony Blair may play a key role in Gaza if a ceasefire takes hold.

But it was long before that, in 1922, that London was given the mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations — an early forerunner to today's United Nations — after the end of the Ottoman empire.

However the British foreign secretary at the time, Arthur Balfour, had also promised Zionist leaders in his country that a "Jewish homeland" could be established inside Palestine. His letter on the topic came to be known as the Balfour Declaration.

As a result of the letter, there was an increase in Jewish migration to Palestine. Even though the Balfour Declaration said that nothing should prejudice the rights of the local Arab population, the people living there and then Arab leaders in other countries who had been promised independence, felt betrayed by the British.

This marked the beginning of the historical and ongoing problems between Israel and the Palestinains. And even though Britain, faced with growing problems and conflicts of interest, gave the mandate back to the United Nations in 1947, and the United Nations then proposed two states alongside one another, these problems have never been resolved.

The 'Board of Peace'

All of this obviously happened long before Tony Blair's time. But now it seems that the former British prime minister, 72 years old, could well end up with another kind of mandate in this region. That is, according to US President Doanld Trump's recently released peace plan.

Trump wants to end the conflict in Gaza, which started in late 2023 after the Gaza-based militant group Hamas attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of around 1,200 people. The resulting Israeli military campaign has since killed over 65,000 people in Gaza. 

According to the Trump plan, after a ceasefire has been negotiated, Gaza should be run by a technocratic government, which is overseen by a so-called "Board of Peace." Trump would be the chairman of that board but it seems Blair is meant to play a leading role too. The latter has come in for a great deal of criticism in the region and further afield.

"I think it's preferable that he stays in his own country and lets Palestinians rule themselves by themselves … rather than subjecting us to another colonial rule," Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative told US news channel, CNN.

Francesca Albanese, the UN's special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, was even more disparaging on social media.

In her reference to the Hague, Albanese is highlighting perhaps the darkest chapter of Blair's political history: his role in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Before that war began, Blair was one of the country's most successful and popular politicians. First elected in 1997, he became Labour's longest serving prime minister.

Helped end Irish troubles

Part of his earlier popularity was due to the fact that, in 1998, he helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, which ended years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

But after the attacks on New York of September 11, 2001, Blair was seen to stand almost unconditionally behind former US President George Bush's "war on terror." This sort of apparent obedience made Blair the subject of much criticism and some even called him America's "poodle."

Two years later, the Iraq war began, with both Bush and Blair arguing that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and therefore had to be stopped, a claim that was later refuted.

Thirteen years later, a seven-year official inquiry into the war led by retired civil servant John Chilcot, delivered an unfavorable verdict. The intelligence reports about the alleged weapons fo mass destruction should have been questioned and the invasion should not have gone ahead.

British soldiers had been sent into combat in Iraq poorly prepared and Blair has often had the defend himself against accusations that he is a war criminal. The committee's report concluded that Blair had not made a "personal and demonstrable decision to deceive Parliament or the public."

Blair accepted the findings of the inquiry and went on to express "sorrow, regret and apology" for mistakes he made. 

8 years as Middle East envoy

Despite all that though, Blair remained active in the Middle East. The day after he resigned as British prime minister in 2007, Blair was appointed Middle East envoy by the so-called "Quartet," which works on the resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict and consists of the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia.

But here too Blair came in for heavy criticism, mostly because of his own private business interests in the Middle east. He held the position for eight years but made little progress.

In fact, Palestinains charged that Blair increasingly took Israel's side in the conflict.

"He did nothing for the Palestinian cause but was used by Israel to justify its occupation and settlement policy," former Palestinian negotiator and then Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said at the time. "We are happy that Tony Blair is going. He should have resigned a long time ago."

Blair then remained active in business and also founded a think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, or TBI, in 2016. Blair has been known to advise autocratic leaders, such as Rwanda's Paul Kagame and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

TBI staffers were allegedly involved in coming up with a post-war reconstruction plan for Gaza, a claim TBI denies.

"Tony Blair's think tank worked with a project developing a postwar Gaza plan that included the creation of a 'Trump Riviera' and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk," British newspaper The Guardian reported in July.

In February 2025, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video illustrating the "Trump Riviera" vision, which caused widespread outrage.

But what might best be described as his checkered history in the Middle East does not seem to have made Blair think twice about taking up a possible new role in post-war Gaza's "Board of Peace."

In a statement, he described the new Trump plan as "bold and intelligent" and "the best chance of ending two years of war, misery and suffering." He did not, however, comment as to whether he himself would play any major role within it.

This story was originally published in German.